New Year’s has come and gone, and for the average American, a new year means setting a list of resolutions that they’ll follow for maybe a month before abandoning them until next January rolls around. Because let’s face it: trying to be a better person is hard.

For me, unfortunately, it’s no different.

I normally establish a set of goals at the beginning of each January, and it hardly varies from year to year.

The phrase “a lot” is vague, and intentionally so, which probably means I’ve lost the battle already. Out of the two, I’m more likely to complete the former goal than I am the latter; I’ve read every day of my life for the last decade.

It’s easy, comparatively. Writing? Not so much.

Part of the problem is I have to sift through a mountain of unread books that don’t just occupy one stack but also multiple bookshelves in my apartment.

My friends and family are well-educated in regards to my book-buying compulsion. Women, like my fiancé, have shoes, or clothes, or jewelry; I have books.

I visit a bookstore, whether it be a secondhand dealer or a commercial giant, probably ten times a month. I could probably find a book for you in any bookstore from Little Rock to Fayetteville, and I’m a member of a book club that sends a first edition signed copy of a new book each month.

I’ve surrounded myself with books, probably well-over five-hundred books in my apartment alone, and so now comes the business of reading them all.

This happened because, as much as I hate to say it, buying books is much more fun than reading them. I love their bindings, their covers, the way they smell. The presentation of a book, combined with the idea of reading it, is oftentimes more appealing than the book itself.

Don’t get me wrong, I love reading, but a sort of anxiety tends to creep over you when you realize that your eyes were five times bigger than your stomach.

This year, I’ve lowered my anticipated reading output, as I’m going to attempt to tackle some epics — “Les Miserables,” “Gravity’s Rainbow” and “1Q84,” to name a few — while sprinkling in some shorter novels and plays along the way.

So I’m shooting for somewhere around thirty books this year. In a good year, I’ll read around fifty books, so optimally I’ve got a decade of reading to do before I’ll have ascended the Book Mountain.

But that doesn’t take into account books I’ll accrue over the next 10 years as well, sure to be a modest amount of texts.

Maybe I’m destined to never read all of my books. Maybe my quest to be well-read will mirror Zeno’s paradox more than a linear quest with a litany of completed goals along the way.

Maybe I’m less of a mountain climber than a Sisyphus, perpetually pushing a rock to the top of the hill just to see it roll back to the bottom.